THE DEEP AND PROFOUND THOUGHTS OF CITIZEN STUART, MANCHESTER BASED LIBERTARIAN, TARGET SHOOTER AND SPACE ENTHUSIAST. EVERYTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG IS MY OPINION, AND NOT NECESSARILY THAT OF THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY.

For various reasons, I've decided that now's the time to retire this blog. I haven't been able to maintain it with the same energy and focus lately, and frankly it's been in decline for the last couple of years. Partly it's because some of my energies have been going towards Libertarian Party activities (and I will still be contributing to the Party members' blogs), partly it's because I've been finding it a bit hard to get on top of my personal economic situation lately.

And I'm also coming out of the worst summer of my life, having just lost my mother to cancer. It's taken me a few weeks to get my energy levels back up to the point where I can even be bothered posting this.

It doesn't help that it's been an unusually long time since my last job finished, so I really need to focus my energies on getting some kind of decent employment (me and the rest of Labour's millions).

So this seems to me the right time to put this blog to bed. I'll leave it up for a few weeks, then cancel my account with 20Six. That's not to say that I'll be gone for good. As I've said, I'll still contribute to the Libertarian Party blogs, and it wouldn't surprise me if I start a new, more focussed, personal blog in the fairly near future.

Until then, there's a couple of things I'd like you to do, my hypothetical reader:

Apart from being a pretty decent musician, Ted Nugent has also become a well-known advocate of the freedom to bear arms in recent years. I like the straightforward way in which he makes his case in this video:

If you disagree with what he says, that's your right - it's also my right to respectfully suggest that you get your head examined.

I just found this on Henry North London's blog. It's another of those re-dubbed Downfall mashups. It's full of swearing, which is against my usual rules for this blog, but it's funny as **** so on this particular occasion, I thought "what the ****, why not?"

Watch out for the line six minutes into the video "**** that, I can't take another second of Labour!"

It looks like all the work put in by various members of the Libertarian Party to support our first candidate in the local elections has paid off. Here are the results of the election for the Wisbech South division of Cambridgeshire County Council:

Libertarian 140 (6.9%)

Conservative 930 (46.2%)

Labour 212 (10.5%)

"Liberal" Democrats 196 (9.7%)

UKIP 532 (26.4%)

That's not bad for an inexperienced candidate representing a fairly new, unknown party in what has traditionally been considered a rock-solid safe Tory seat. This is mostly due to the hard work of our candidate Andrew Hunt , who has shown what can be achieved using limited resources if you focus on the issues that local people care about. Nice one Andrew!

Not only has this campaign raised the Libertarian Party's profile but it has provided us with valuable experience of electioneering which should stand us in good stead when we start fighting election campaigns here in the North West - that could be this year or next, but it will be soon.

Or at least this one doesn't seem to be getting much rest at the moment. It's all in a good cause though, the cause of helping the Libertarian Party with its current and near future election campaigns. I had to drive down all the way to that London on Saturday morning to attend an election planning meeting for Libertarian Party candidates and regional co-ordinators (I fall into the second category). In retrospect, I should have driven down the night before, parked up in Rickmansworth (where I have a friend who would have put me up for the night) and then taken the tube into London in the morning. But I didn't like to impose, so I scraped myself out of bed as early in the morning as possible and drove down there almost non-stop. I actually made good time until I hit London, which is when my troubles started. That town isn't fit for modern people - the streets are too narrow, there's too much traffic and once you get into the main part of town it's almost impossible to tell which direction you're going in (I normally navigate around cities by noting the direction of satellite dishes, but they don't seem to have satellite TV down there for some reason). Consequently I got lost. Another thing I don't like about that London is that there seems to be a chronic shortage of car parks, but I found one eventually, parked up and made my way on foot to the venue. The meeting was nearly halfway through when I arrived, I was tired and not in the best of moods, so I don't think I contributed much useful to the proceedings, but it was good to see that the meeting was well attended. Quite a few people (I don't know the exact number) have applied to be candidates in both the General Election and the next lot of local elections (we see no point in bothering with the current election for the European clown parliament). The selection process is underway at the moment.

There were also talks by Gregg (a veteran political campaigner based in the North West) who was full of good advice on campaigning, and Andrew Hunt. Andrew has the honour of being the Libertarian Party's very first candidate for elected office. He's running for the Wisbech South seat in the Cambridgeshire County Council election on 4th June. Like most of us in the Libertarian Party he is in no way, shape or form a career politician - just a concerned citizen who's had enough and wants to do his bit to restore some decency and common sense to the political process. Andrew talked for a while about his experiences while out campaigning, and he came across as being quite a positive sort of guy. He'll need to be, because he's going up against a very experienced Tory councillor who seems to have his feet well under the table. Wisbech South seems to be regarded as a Tory stronghold, despite the fact that the council have increased Council Tax by more than the rate of inflation and seem to be addicted to wasting money. From what I understand, Labour, UKIP and the "Lib" Dems have put up paper candidates who aren't even bothering to campaign - you can draw your own conclusions about their attitudes to the voters from that.

So in those terms it's a straight fight between Andrew and the Tory - a bit David and Goliath maybe, but hopefully we'll be able to do the opposition some harm in the polls. In any case, standing in the election both raises the Libertarian Party's profile and gains us some useful campaigning experience, so it's a win/win situation for us. Griffins don't fail.

And that explains why I'm not going to be getting any serious rest for the next couple of weeks, either. Andrew's not running his election campaign single-handed - even though Wisbech's a bit out of the way for most of us, a whole bunch of Libertarian Party activists have volunteered to go there and help him out. I've volunteered to help with leafletting etc both next weekend and the weekend after - it'll mean a long drive down from Manchester, followed by hours of walking the streets of Wisbech and sleeping on Andrew's living room floor with a bunch of other Libertarian Party volunteers, but it's all in a good cause and will have multiple benefits. It'll help Andrew, it'll help the Libertarian Party and it'll help the good people of Wisbech by showing them that there is a sensible alternative to the Tory tax and spend merchant who's currently got the job.

It will also provide me and the other volunteers with practical campaigning experience - which is sure to be useful in the near future as we put up more candidates. It's a funny thing - I'm not looking forward to the long drive, I'm not looking forward to the hours of ground pounding while I deliver leaflets, I'm not looking forward to sleeping on Andrew's floor - but I am looking forward to it.

Of course I'm not what you'd call a natural political animal. I'm really just someone who wants politicians to leave me alone - but they won't do that, they tax me more than I can afford to pay, they ban things I enjoy doing and they always seem to want to grab even more power. So it's been necessary for me to band together with other like-minded citizens to put the State back in its rightful place - as a service organisation, not our overlords. If you think the same way, why don't you join the Libertarian Party? We're a rapidly growing organisation, but if we're going to challenge the LibLabConsensus (and I think we can) we need more members, more money, more activists and more candidates.

Sorry about my recent absence from this blog. I haven't been idle - overworked if anything. Not only have I been doing actual paid work for the last few weeks (lucky me, in present circumstances) but I also seem to have moved up a bit in the Libertarian Party, which means a fair amount of unpaid work in my spare time. Combine that with an increasingly nasty domestic situation which has now been resolved (not in the way I would have liked, but it's been resolved) and my internet time has been a bit limited of late. I'm back now anyway, and I'll try to post fairly regularly on this blog as well as the North West Libertarians blog.

I've actually just had a busy long weekend. Friday night I was down at the gun club. I used up most of my ammo thinking it was about time I got my eyes tested, because I couldn't seem to get the front sight of my Winchester in focus - then I realised it had a bit of fluff on it! I'll remember to check next time. Saturday was all about shopping, doing some repairs about the house and cleaning up my spare room. Sunday was unusual - I chaired the first meeting of the North West Branch of the Libertarian Party at a boozer in town. Lots of fun, and the first of many such meetings I expect. A lot of the meeting was taken up with discussion of our upcoming election campaign.

Then there's what I did last night. I've been wanting to get more exercise, so I decided to learn the traditional British martial art of quarterstaff fighting. I had my first lesson last night - all about posture and warming up, no sparring as yet. I expect it will be a while before I get up to this standard:

Or even this:

But you've got to start somewhere, haven't you? I reckon it'll be a good art to learn.

That's my score. It would have been 100%, but I do believe that knocking off foreign tyrants is sometimes the right thing to do, whereas the Libertarian Party currently has a policy of armed neutrality. Why don't you take the test yourself and see how you do?